Main Content
Themes
Themes
Medicine
- Cutting for Stone / Abraham Verghese
- The Immortal Life of Henrietta Lacks / Rebecca Skloot
- Bloodletting and Miraculous Cures / Vincent Lam
- Oxygen / Carol Wiley Cassella
- The Brain Thank Changes Itself / Norman Doidge
Music
- A Visit From the Goon Squad / Nerida Newton
- Drown Them in the Sea / Nicholas Angel
- The Piano Tuner / Daniel Mason
- RPM / Noel Mengel
- An Equal Music / Vikram Seth
- Everything is Connected / Daniel Barenboim
- Maestro / Peter Goldsworthy
Set in Australia
- Death of a Whaler / Nerida Newton
- Drown Them in the Sea / Nicholas Angel
- Everyman's Rules for Scientific Living / Carrie Tiffany
- Five Bells / Gail Jones
- Remembering Bablyon / DAvid Malouf
- End of the Night Girl / Amy T Mathews
- Eucalyptus / Murray Bail
Books into Movies
- Eye of the Storm / Patrick White
- One Day / David Nichols
- Sarah's Key / Tatiana de Rosnay
- We need to Talk About Kevin / Lionel Shriver
- Desert Flower / Waris Dirie
Food
- Julia Child: a life / Laura Shapiro
- Julie and Julia / Julie Powell
- Rosewater & Soda Bread / Marsha Mehran
- The Gourmet: a novel / Muriel Barbery
Women/Relationships with women
- Let me Sing you Gentle Songs / Linda Olsson
- Secret Life of Bees / Sue Monk Kidd
- The Elegance of the Hedgehog / Muriel Barbery
- Poppy / Drusilla Modjeska
- The Help / Kathryn Stockett
- Letters to Alice on first reading Jane Austen / Fay Weldon
- Fair Play / Tove Jansson
Debut Novels
- Under this Unbroken Sky / Shandi Mitchell
- Say You’re One of Them / Uwem Akpan
- The Behaviour of Moths / Poppy Adams
- Man Gone Down / Michael Thomas
- All the Living / C E Morgan
- American Rust / Philip Meyer
Verse Novels
- Eugine Onegin / Pushkin
- Aurora Leigh / E Barrett Browning
- The Sugar Mile / Glyn Maxwell
Prize Winning Fiction
- The Art of the Engine Driver / Steven Carroll
- The Gift of Speed / Steven Carroll
- The Time We Have Taken / Steven Carroll
- Sorry / Gail Jones
- The Widow & Her Hero / Thomas Keneally
- The Guernsey Lit & Potato Peel Pie Society / Mary Ann Shaffer
- A Fraction of the Whole/ Steve Toltz
- El Dorado / Dorothy Porter
- The Zookeeper’s War / Steven Conte
The Mitfords
- The Sisters: The Saga of the Mitford Family / Mary S. Lovell (also called The Mitford Girls: The biography)
- The Mitfords: Letters Between Six Sisters / Charlotte Mosley
- Bookshop at 10 Curzon St: Letters between Nancy Mitford and Heywood Hill
- Decca: the letters of Jessica Mitford
- The House of Mitford / Jonathan and Catherine Guinness
- Love in a Cold Climate / Nancy Mitford
- The Pursuit of Love / Nancy Mitford
- Don’t Tell Alfred / Nancy Mitford
- Hons and Rebels / Jessica Mitford
- Wait for Me / Deborah Devonshire
Scandinavia
- Out Stealing Horses / Per Petterson
- Through a glass darkly / Jostein Gaarder
- The Birds / Tarjei Vesaas
- The Ice Palace / Tarjei Vesaas
- Spring Night / Tarjei Vesaas
Scandinavia - Crime Writers
- Hakan Nesser
- Kjell Eriksson
- Henning Mankell
Spain
- Ghosts of Spain: travels…./ Giles Tremlett
- As I walked out one midsummer morning / Laurie Lee
- The Sun Also Rises / Ernest Hemingway
Africa
- Things fall apart / Chinua Achebe
- The Conservationist / Nadine Gordimer
- Red Strangers / Elspeth Huxley
- Red Dust / Gillian Slovo
- A Beautiful place to die / Malla Nunn
- Last King of Scotland/ Giles Foden
- Song for Night / Chris Abani
- When a crocodile eats the sun / Peter Godwin
- Dont Lets Go To The Dogs Tonight / Alexandra Fuller
- Gogo Mama: A Journey Into The Lives Of Twelve African Women / Sally Sara
India
- The White Tiger / Aravind Adiga
- Marrying Anita / Anita Jain
- Sea of Poppies / Amitar Ghosh
China
- Factory Girls / Lesley Chang
- Out of Mao's shadow / Philip P Pan
- The Man who loved China / Simon Winchester
- The last days of old Beijing / Michael Meyer
Aboriginal Issues
- The Secret River / Kate Grenville
- My Place / Sally Morgan
- Follow the Rabbit Proof Fence / Doris Pilkington
- The Tall Man: Death and life on Palm Island / Chloe Hooper
- Hey Mum, What’s a Half Caste? / Lorraine McGee-Sippel
- Up From the Mission / Noel Pearson
- Last Truck Out / Betty Lockyer
- Donald Thomson in Arnhem Land / Donald Thomson
- Children of the Wilderness / Donald Thomson
Afghanistan
- The Swallows of Kabul / Yasmina Khadra
- The Carpet Wars / Christopher Kremmer
- An unexpected light / Jason Elliot
- Afghanistan / Stephen Tanner
- The Places in Between / Rory Stewart
- Adventures in Afghanistan / Louis Palmer
- Meena: Heroine of Afghanistan / Melody Chavis
- Zoya’s Story / Zoya with John Follain
- The Sewing Circles of Herat / Christina Lamb
- Latifa: My Forbidden Place / Latifa
- Our Woman in Kabul / Irris Makler
- Under the Persimmon Tree / Suzanne Fisher Staples
- The Bookseller of Kabul / Asne Seierstad
- Come back to Afghanistan / Said Hyder Akbar
- Parvana, Parvana’s Journey and Shauzia / Deborah Ellis
- The Kite Runner / Khaled Hosseini
Irish Writers
- Brooklyn / Colm Toibin
- Mothers and Sons / Colm Toibin
- Nothing Happens in Carmincross / Benedict Kiely
- Reading in the Dark / Seamus Deane
- Charming Billy / Alice McDermott
- After This / Alice McDermott
- Love and Summer / William Trevor
- After Rain / William Trevor
- Felicia’s Journey / William Trevor
- Story of Lucy Gault / William Trevor
- The Sea / John Banville
- Letters of Love / Niall Williams
- Only Say the Word / Niall Williams
American Novels
- Ask the Dust / John Fante
- Crossing to Safety / Wallace Stegner
- Angle of Repose / Wallace Stegner
- Scottsboro / Ellen Feldman
- The Corrections / Jonathan Franzen
- My Fathers Tears / John Updike
Vietnam War
- The Things They Carried by Tim O’Brien
- Monsoon by Di Morrissey
- Highways to a War by Christopher Koch
- A Hundred Years of Happiness by Nicole Seitz
- Figurehead by Patrick Allington
Feminism
- The Second Sex by Simone de Beauvoir
- The Bell Jar by Sylvia Plath
- A Room of One’s Own by Virginia Woolf
- The Women’s Room by Marilyn French
- The Feminine Mystique by Betty Friedan
- The Yellow Wallpaper by Charlotte Perkins Gilman
- The Beauty Myth by Naomi Wolf
- Fear of Flying by Erica Jong
Vampires
- The Radleys by Matt Haig
- The Historian by Elizabeth Kostova
- The Hunger by Whitley Strieber
- I am Legend by Richard Matheson
Popular Philosophy
- The Architecture of Happiness by Alain de Botton
- The Consolations of Philosophy by Alain de Botton
- Status Anxiety by Alain de Botton
- The Pleasures and Sorrows of Work by Alain de Botton
- The Age of Absurdity by Michael Foley
- Ideas that Matter: a personal guide for the 21st century by A C Grayling
- The Meaning of Things: applying philosophy to life by A C Grayling
- Writings on an Ethical Life by Peter Singer
- The Life You Can Save by Peter Singer
Crime – Sidekicks
- Postmortem by Patricia Cornwell
- A Great Deliverance by Elizabeth George
- Chasing Darkness by Robert Crais
- Midnight Fugue by Reginald Hill
- Long Lost by Harlan Coben
- Last Seen Wearing by Colin Dexter
Contemporary London
- Portobello by Ruth Rendell
- The Tower, The Zoo and the Tortoise by Julia Stuart
- Brick Lane by Monica Ali
- Her Fearful Symmetry by Audrey Niffenegger.
- The London Pigeon Wars by Patrick Neate
- The Hand That First Held Mine by Maggie O’Farrell
- Last Orders by Graham Swift
American Novels – 1945-1970s
- To Kill a Mockingbird by Harper Lee
- Herzog by Saul Bellow
- Nine Stories and Catcher in the Rye by J D Salinger
- Lolita by Vladimir Naborkov
- On the Road by Jack Kerouac
- Naked Lunch by William S Burroughs
Mystery
- Rebecca by Daphne Du Maurier
- The Name of the Rose by Umberto Eco
- The Eyre Affair by Jasper Fforde
- The Magus by John Fowles
- Tales of Mystery and Imagination by Edgar Allan Poe
Fire
- Kindling by Darren Groth
- The Great Fire by Shirley Hazzard
- Gone With the Wind by Margaret Mitchell
- Out of Africa by Karen Blixen
- Jane Eyre by Charlotte Bronte
- Lord of the Flies by William Golding
- Fahrenheit 451 by Ray Bradbury
Slow Movement
- Enough by John Naish
- Affluenza by Clive Hamilton
- Consumed by Benjamin Barber
- Civilising Globalisation by David Kinley
- The 100-mile diet : a year of local eating by Alisa Smith and J.B.MacKinnon
- In praise of slow : how a worldwide movement is challenging the cult of speed by Carl Honoré